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8 Ways to Be More Proactive

Today’s CPAs, like most professionals, face a plethora of challenges and pressures not only in their day-to-day work lives, but also in their careers as they strive to advance. The pace of life in general has accelerated, thanks in large part to technology, and accountants who want to progress and do well for their clients and themselves cannot be complacent. They need to plan, take control, analyze processes, be more interactive, and anticipate problems before they happen.

Is This Tiny Thing Majorly Draining Your Productivity?

Fast Company — There’s a name for those everyday annoyances that build up and grate on your last nerve, drain your energy, and sap your productivity, says Madeleine Blanchard, co-founder of coaching services at The Ken Blanchard Companies in Escondido, California. They’re called tolerations. They include those little and not-so-little tasks, chores, and to-dos that we typically put off. They’re unpleasant enough that you want to avoid them, but pressing or disruptive enough that they have a negative impact on your daily life. The late coaching pioneer Thomas J. Leonard, founder of Coach U and the International Coach Federation, is widely credited with coining the term.

“It’s a condition or situation that’s irritating and can be eliminated—something you’re putting up with that has a negative impact on you, consuming your time, energy, or resources,” says executive coach Donna Schilder, founder of performance-coaching firm Glacier Point Solutions, Inc.

Don’t Remove All those LinkedIn Clichés Just Yet

FORTUNE — After LinkedIn announced this year’s lists of the most overused words in its profiles yesterday morning, an array of people pulled theirs up to see whether they flaunted their “creative,” “effective” “track records” a bit too much.

A few tweeted that they had none of the 10worn-outwords in their LinkedIn profiles. Many others, including LinkedIn’s (LNKD) co-founder, couldn’t say their profiles were clear of clichéd terms. . . .

“Instead of using adjectives to describe yourself, you want to illustrate it,” says Donna Schilder, a career and leadership coach who has a video series on how to use LinkedIn to give your career a boost. If you want to show you’re a “team player,” talk about the times you’ve led the team or supported the team. Use the word “we,” which is a good indicator that you are collaborative.

Schilder recommends that applicants include numbers when possible to show the size of their impact. If you don’t have specifics, you can often come up with a solid estimate of your impact.

One way to get to the specifics that grab a recruiter’s attention, Schilder says, is to answer questions such as “What impact did I have on the customer?” or “How have I helped increase sales or retain customers?”

Should You Tweet Your Own Firing?

Donna Schilder, a professional career coach, argued that there are certain circumstances when tweeting one’s firing makes sense “As a career coach,” she said, “I would advise a client who believes that their industry, and all possible future employers will find out about their firing through the media or otherwise, and believes the firing was unjust, to tweet about the firing and give their response to the firing via Twitter or other social media.” In such scenarios, Schilder said, a tweet explaining the circumstances of a firing may even improve the person’s chance of getting hired somewhere else.

Schilder added a qualifier though. “For most people,” she said, “employers in their industry will not find out that they have been fired. In this case, I would not recommend they tweet about being fired which would publicize information that might adversely affect their future employment.”

10 Tools to Help You Decide Which Skills to Put on Your Resume

What Makes for a Good Boss?

You want someone who will tell it like it is, pull no punches and be realistic about what the future holds. After all if he or she is willing to lie to you, what makes you think they won’t tell tall tales about your performance to their bosses? Next thing you know, you’re doing all the work while he takes credit for the performance behind closed doors.

What To Do Hours Before A Big Job Interview

Your big interview is just ahead, just hours away. You feel your stress levels rising, your thoughts scurrying around your brain fast and furious. Then, you stop yourself and ask: What should I be doing now?

If your big interview is scheduled for 2:00 p.m., you need a plan to make the most of the hours beforehand. Spend the time so you are calm, confident and prepared when you show up for the interview. In an ideal world you might take the day off work or a half day, so you can focus on interviewpreparation and self-care. But even if you can only take an extra hour or so, use the time beforehand carefully.

What should you do? I asked two career experts this question – DonnaSchilder, a leadership and career coach from Long Beach, Calif., and KainneHansbury, a technology recruiter/principal with Winter Wyman.

They shared plenty of suggestions, which I’ve synthesized into these five big ideas:

Stepping Up When the Boss is Out of Town

Your boss’ vacation is coming up soon. Last time she left it felt chaotic and as if no one was minding the store. This time, you want to step up – for the department’s sake and for your own too.If you’ve been hoping to moveintomanagement, a boss’ holiday could be your on-ramp to show your skills and advance your prospects.Before you start taking charge, though, you need the boss’ blessing to be the fill-in manager.

So set up a meeting and offer your support and assists – and be sure to indicate the advantages to your taking on added responsibilities, said DonnaSchilder, a leadership, career and business coach. Show how it will keep the department moving toward goals or give your boss the opportunity to take a stretch assignment in the future and give you partial responsibility for the day-to-day department operations.

Your LinkedIn Profile Picture is the first thing a recruiter or hiring manager will see when they look at your LinkedIn Profile. In literally an instant, they will make a judgment about you. If you make any of the mistakes below, that judgment will be: “this is not a person I want to hire”

1. Don’t Dare to Be Un-Dead:

These days we’re bombarded with zombie and vampire movies, and I know it’s hip to be as pale as Kristen Stewart or Robert Pattinson, but don’t look like the “undead” in your LinkedIn Profile picture! You could literally scare recruiters away!

Is Your LinkedIn Profile Picture Scaring Away Recruiters?

While there are no set-in-stone rules for choosing the perfect profile picture for LinkedIn, it’s important to approach LinkedIn as a professional way of connecting and not just another social media site. While having a picture of you with all your friends at a concert may be appropriate for Facebook, it’s best to opt for something more professional on LinkedIn.

We’ve compiled a list of do’s and don’ts for choosing your profile picture to make sure that you’re attracting the right kind of attention on LinkedIn.

How to Bust the Most Common Age-Related Stereotypes at Work

Millennials don’t take well to even the slightest bit of criticism at work. And we all know that Gen X’ers don’t play well with team members. As for Boomers, they’re totally out of touch and couldn’t care less about learning new things on the job. After all, they’re just looking to retire soon. We’ve all heard these age-based workplace stereotypes at some point, but what can youdo to avoid being unfairly pigeonholed yourself?

Jane Bianchi of LearnVest spoke to three career pros for advice on how to dodge generational typecasting while on the job hunt.

Should All Job Seekers Have a Personal Website?

Last year, when Mitch Canter, 30, of Franklin, Tenn., decided to look for a new job, he immediately created his own site atMitchCanter.com .

“I’m a web developer/designer, so I engineered my site to look exactly like my paper résumé,” he says. “I figured that having a site with my name as the URL would make it super easy for people to find me and reach out.”

Just four months later, when a friend passed along his name to the company, the person who is now his boss googled “Mitch Canter,” and one of the first things that popped up was Canter’s site.

6 Common Clichés That Are Bad for Your Financial Outlook

“LinkedIn Today”: A Powerful Tool for Business Knowledge

As a Career Coach, I recommend to you that as you enter the workforce, you make an effort to stay current on business trends within your industry and, if you want to be a manager, director, or CEO one day, make a habit of reading what the business thought leaders are saying.

Being well informed of the events, issues, and climate changes in your industry will help you create more success in your career.

LinkedIn Today is a special feature of LinkedIn that gives you a personalized news source. This feature selects stories that your industry peers and your connections are reading and writing (curated content), so that you can focus on what matters most to your industry.

5 Mistakes You’re Making on LinkedIn (& How to Fix Them)

One issue that our career experts talked about across the board was how many college students had the wrong type of profile photo. Donna Schilder, a leadership, career and business coach, points out that LinkedIn isn’t Instagram. “I’ve seen people put vacation pictures, funny pictures and even pictures of themselves in a bikini on LinkedIn,” she says. “You will not get hired if you do this!”

Schilder has several pieces of advice for having a classy and appropriate photo. “Your picture should be a professional portrait, taken by a professional photographer,” she says. “The picture should focus on your face and it should not have a distracting background. No furniture, curtains or trees coming out of your head!” Schilder also recommends having a neutral background or one that contrasts with your hair color (for example, a blue background for blondes).

Becoming the Best Version of You

Life coaching is unique from other forms of therapy because it focuses not on disabilities, but rather on positive aspects of the person’s life that can be used to overcome the negative, says Dearborn. Plus, life coaches offer their clients the tools and techniques they need to succeed immediately while assisting in lifelong change, says life coach Kim Somers Egelsee, of Huntington Beach, author of Getting Your Life to a Ten.

“[Life coaching] focuses on now and the future, not the past. It focuses on improving yourself, not healing. And, it focuses on determining what you want in life and creating and implementing a plan on how to get what you want in life,” says Master Certified Coach Donna Schilder, of Long Beach, creator of the LinkedIn Video E-Course “6 Weeks to More Success Through LinkedIn.”

Get LinkedIn®! Leverage LinkedIn to Build Your Coaching Practice

You go to networking event after networking event, meet lots of business people, but when you get back to your office you leave the business cards you collected on your desk.

They seem to multiply. Lurking in dusty little piles.

From time to time you look at them, and think: Who are these people? What did they want? Were they interested in coaching? You know you need to do something with all of those business cards! But what?

One of the biggest mistakes coaches make is not maintaining a personal connection with their valuable business contacts. But there’s a free tool that can help! LinkedIn® is a business-oriented social networking site that enables users to stay connected with their business contacts and create new business relationships.

The Bottom Line: Speeding to new business connections

About seven years ago, Donna Schilder was at a local Chamber of Commerce event where the speaker didn’t show up.

In a pinch, the chamber organized the audience into something the Long Beach life and business coach had never done before – a speed networking session.

Under the gun, Schilder and other business people pitched their products or services, then moved to the next person when time ran out.

“That was one of the best networking events I ever went to,” Schilder said. “I still utilize the services of people I met there and get referrals from people that I met there, and that made my business swell very quickly.”

How to Write a LinkedIn Headline That Attracts Recruiters

I am excited to be writing my first Guest Blog for the Purdue CCO. I am a Career Coach and LinkedIn Expert with 6-Week Video E-course that I have created to help people use LinkedIn to find a Job.

In this blog post, I am going to talk about how to write an effective LinkedIn Headline. If you follow the tips in this blog, you will be found on LinkedIn by more Hiring Managers and Recruiters, which will generate opportunities for more interviews, which will in turn give you a better chance to receive a job offer.

LinkedIn Laws of Attraction – Part 4: A Complete Profile

The More Words the Merrier!

In Parts 2 and 3 of this Series, I talked about putting the right Keywords in the right places. But it’s important to add Keywords throughout your Profile, because that impacts the Search Algorithm too. And, it’s important that once someone clicks on your Profile it delivers an effective marketing message.

60% of LinkedIn users don’t have a complete Profile. This is a huge mistake!!! Having an incomplete Profile can hurt your reputation!!! If you have a blank or lackluster Profile, potential clients may reject you because you appear to be inexperienced, ineffective, or lazy.

LinkedIn Laws of Attraction – Part 3: Put the Right Keywords in the Right Places

Right Places

Put the Right Keywords in the Right Places

LinkedIn is like Match.com, you put the right keywords in your profile and the right person finds you. LinkedIn has one more requirement though: you need to put the right keywords in the right places in your Profile to attract potential clients.

So what are the right places?

The areas/sections of your LinkedIn Profile that are thought to have most impact on LinkedIn’s Search Algorithm are your:

Tagline/Headlines
Job Titles
Specialties Section
Skills Section

NOTE: The Skills section is new and is still in beta testing, so it may change a bit over the next year.

LinkedIn Laws of Attraction – Part 2: Choose the Right Keywords to Attract Your Target Client

In Part 2 of this Expert Series on LinkedIn Laws of Attraction, let’s talk about ATTRACTION!

How do I attract the right person? Women obsess over it, Match.com makes millions from it, and a clever series of commercials starring a ripped Isaiah Mustafa have men dousing themselves in Old Spice over it. It seems there’s no simple answer – swig Scope, squeeze into your Spanx, pump iron – who knows what works.

LinkedIn Laws of Attraction – Part 1: Why Should a Coach Market Themselves on LinkedIn?

My recent Telecall with Garry for choice Magazine’s Multi-Media Series on ”6 Steps to a LinkedIn Profile that will ATTRACT Coaching Clients” was very well attended (682 callers). I think it was well attended because we as coaches know we need to be using LinkedIn to market our practices, but it feels overwhelming to actually do it. But luckily it isn’t really that hard, you just need someone to show you how!

In this Expert Series on the “LinkedIn Laws of Attraction,” I will cover how to ATTRACT potential clients to your LinkedIn Profile. That’s the first step in using LinkedIn to enroll more clients into your Coaching practice.

5 Ways To Successfully Run A Side Business

If you’re starting a new project, or a new business, in September, you’re in good company.

This is the month that moms and dads, recent grads and others decide to jump into a new endeavor or restart some project shoved aside in the summer months.

They need to balance this with the demands of their day job – and the boss may or may not be supportive of your Etsy shop or your new business. Yet these slash careers or side pursuits can make you “more rounded, develop additional skips, develop additional business relationships” and more, said Donna Schilder, a career coach who has had a string of side businesses, from editing and resume writing to an e-course on creating success through LinkedIn.

So as you ramp up your second income stream or an active volunteer activity, consider these five pointers:

1. Ask permission or ask forgiveness. Read up on your employer’s policies about outside jobs and interests. Find out whether you are expected to notify someone in HR or elsewhere. Then consider your direct supervisor’s views – if she’s laid back and involved in many community activities, she may not sweat your tiny start-up. Then decide whether to fly below the radar for a while, or be completely upfront and tell everyone what you’re working on from the start.

How To Rev Up Your Career Just Days Before The New Year

If you’re working this week, you may have extra time for Facebook games or for long workouts at your gym. The week between Christmas and New Year’s can be a slow one in some corporateoffices – and that can be a precious opportunity for some careerclimbing and creativity.Yes, you can and should use these dead days to liven up your work opportunities in 2012.

“It’s a great time of year to go out and do some informational interviews,” said Donna Schilder, a leadership, career and business coach in Southern California. “Talk to different department heads, especially those who are potential bosses, and ask about what issues they run into a lot or what they look for when they’re hiring someone.”

Schilder thinks the slow time is a great time to build the ramp to your next major project, or to measure the cost savings or other impacts of your last one. If you need some ideas on making the most of these rare slow times, read on :

About Donna

My mission in life is to help people be more successful and happier, using the quickest, most efficient path possible. My clients experience amazing improvements in their productivity, time management, leadership skills, goal attainment, stress reduction, and work/life balance.